Foxx told a crowd at the Washington, D.C., Smart Cities Week conference on Sept. 29 that now is the time for dramatic change in transportation. Automated and driverless cars are quickly becoming a reality, and improvements to the Panama Canal will mean more freight on the nation’s highways, he said. In order to be prepared for these changes, he told the audience that data and analytics must be the driver that keeps progress on course. We can’t rely on doing things the way they’ve always been done, Foxx warned.

“Nostalgia is not data based,” he said. “We have to believe our data.”

He noted, “a smart city isn’t a collection of different tech. A smart city understands that tech [provides] tools that will be used to help the city develop.”